Chandra X-ray Observatory Release, July 15, 2021

Visual Description: Abell 1775 

The primary image of this release features a small galaxy cluster plowing through a larger one, leaving behind a wake of hot gas. 

The large galaxy cluster resembles a round cloud of neon blue squiggles, more dense on our left than on our right. Just below the center of this cloud is a light blue shape packed with blurry squiggles. It resembles a mushroom cap on its side, with a thin horizontal stem shaped like an umbrella handle sticking out the bottom, pointing to our left. The mushroom cap is hot gas in the smaller galaxy cluster. The umbrella handle is the wake of hot gas. Although, it's important to remember that small is a relative term. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, containing hundreds or even thousands of individual galaxies.

A red line that resembles a vapor trail left by an airplane cuts through the cloud. It extends from the bottom of the mushroom cap to the upper left of the large blue cloud-like galaxy cluster. This is a jet from a supermassive black hole on the left side of the small mushroom-cap galaxy cluster.

There are two other red lines inside the blue cloud. Both are shorter and more translucent than the jet, but they all have one end near the bottom of the side-facing mushroom cap. The long jet exits the blue cloud at 11 on a clock face. The next longest points toward 10, and the faintest follows the path of the light blue mushroom stem. The origin of these two red tendrils is less clear, but they are likely related to gas motions in the colliding clusters.